Florida's top elections official calls for more early voting

TALLAHASSEE — Contesting the impression that Florida botched the 2012 elections, Secretary of State Ken Detzner issued recommendations Monday to add more days and locations for early voting and to impose word-limits on lawmakers' ballot questions.

Detzner launched a fact-finding effort after long lines plagued the final days of Florida's 2012 presidential contest, drawing national scorn when the state couldn't officially decide who won until four days after the polls closed. The report spreads the blame for that equally on record turnout, local election supervisors and the state.

"The bottom line is voter confidence must be restored. Voters are relying on us to ensure their elections are accessible, efficient and fair," Detzner told a House elections panel Monday.

House lawmakers are expected to advance a bill with many of the recommendations, and the Senate has expressed concerns only about the idea of limiting ballot summaries of proposed constitutional amendments to 75 words, a limit lawmakers exempted themselves from in 2000. Senate Elections Chairman Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, has said he'd rather restrict the number of questions they put before voters.

But while Democrats on the panel argued that Florida's election had been mismanaged, some GOP lawmakers suggested a top-to-bottom reform was an over-reaction.

"We keep blaming everything on long lines, but the one problem we had was the long ballots," said Rep. Ritch Workman, R-Melbourne. "I think we're trying to fix too much."

More than 8.5 million voters turned out for the presidential race, and wait times in some more-populous counties lasted seven hours or longer. In 2011, Florida lawmakers shrank the number of early voting days from 14 days to 8.

The Republican-controlled Legislature also loaded the 2012 ballot with 11 constitutional amendments ranging from criticism of "Obamacare" to abortion restrictions and property- and business-tax breaks.

The questions had a total of 2,263 words. By comparison, the total of 17 amendments that ran on the ballot between 2002 and 2010 had summaries that ran a combined total of 2,371 words. Voters defeated all but three non-controversial amendments, but they were blamed for record-length ballots.

Many of Florida's biggest counties are required to produce ballots in multiple languages. In one of the worst-performing counties, Miami-Dade's ballot was 12 pages long.

Detzner's recommendations largely mirror those of Gov. Rick Scott, who during the election had refused to expand early voting hours but called for fixes two months later.

The report makes a total of 19 recommendations, although the early voting, expanded locations and ballot-length limits are "priority recommendations." Each was sought by county elections supervisors:

At least eight days of early voting, with supervisors having the flexibility to go up to 14 days, including the Sunday before election when many black churches run "souls to the polls" campaigns.

Expanding allowable early-voting locations (currently just city halls, supervisors' main offices and libraries) to also include supervisors' branch offices, a city hall, courthouse, county commission building, civic or convention center, fairgrounds or stadium.

Detzner also wants to require that absentee ballots be mailed to elections supervisors at least 10 days before Election Day, instead of six. This would give supervisors more time to review the ballots and notify voters if there were problems with the signatures on them.